Tottenham are reportedly in talks with PSG owners for a €1bn investment as the Qatari seeks a move to the Premier League

QATAR is ready to invest in pre­mier­ship clubs for the first time.

And PSG boss Nass­er Al-Khe­laifi has already spo­ken “sev­er­al times” with Daniel Levy about a pos­si­ble stake in Tottenham.

A source close to Al-Khe­laifi con­firms that he has spo­ken to Levy about pos­si­ble next steps as part of a post-World Cup invest­ment pol­i­cy change.

Peo­ple close to Levi say he met Al-Khe­laifi pure­ly “as friends.”

How­ev­er, accord­ing to The Tele­graph, QSI is con­sid­er­ing bidding.

Indus­try sources say QSI has been offered a 25% stake in Spurs for just under €1 billion.

QSI has been hold­ing back on glob­al activ­i­ties ahead of the World Cup, but now that that phase is over, Qatar is about to make a big move.

The invest­ment fund acquired a 21.7% stake in Bra­ga, Por­tu­gal for €80m.

QSI has also launched a new world tour for padel, a rac­quet sport that com­bines ten­nis and squash.

But now QSI is tar­get­ing the pre­mier­ship, and talks with Levy are like­ly the first sign of a new strategy.

Since the Qataris cur­rent­ly have no stake in any Pre­mier League club, QSI could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly buy Spurs, Liv­er­pool and Man­ches­ter Unit­ed (all offi­cial­ly on the mar­ket) straight out of the box.

How­ev­er, UEFA’s sport­ing and own­er­ship rules pre­clude hold­ing more than a 30% stake in a club that com­petes with PSG in the Cham­pi­ons League.

Unless he sells PSG, he would be a minor­i­ty stake­hold­er in one of the big six clubs, which is unthink­able at this stage.

It is also pos­si­ble to invest in some clubs as a minor­i­ty share­hold­er in antic­i­pa­tion of the long-term con­tin­ued growth of Prem, the num­ber one domes­tic league in the world.

But even just tak­ing a 25% stake in Tot­ten­ham would mean invest­ing more than €792m in a North Lon­don club, which could mean a hefty trans­fer fee.

UEFA’s new rules stip­u­late that clubs can spend up to 90% of their annu­al income, a per­cent­age that will drop to 70% over the next three seasons.

How­ev­er, while no firm deci­sions have been made and no tar­get clubs have been set, Qataris believe that the cur­rent weak­ness of the pound in inter­na­tion­al mar­kets makes this invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty too much to pass up.

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